Hell's Gate(10)
“Fuck your hypothesis!” the major barked, then paused and added calmly, “That’s an exclamation, right?”
“Right.”
“That’s good, Mac. Because I’m always gettin’ that one mixed up, too.”
Now it was MacCready who looked annoyed. “Is there anything else, Major?”
“Yeah.” Hendry stared into MacCready’s eyes. “It’s good to have you back.”
The zoologist transitioned from annoyed to embarrassed.
The sentiment hung awkwardly in the silence that followed. Hendry straightened his back and cleared his throat. “Just be sure to leave the mission brief on the plane when you jump, and don’t get killed down there. That’s an order.”
MacCready snapped off a perfect salute. “Yes, sir.”
Sure thing, the zoologist told himself.
Japs.
Xavante.
And Bob Thorne.
What could possibly go wrong?
Activity had slowed down as the heat of midday descended upon Waller Field, but the steady pounding of a sledgehammer shaping metal continued apace. A shirtless black teen stopped hammering and looked up as MacCready and Juliano passed by. Slick with sweat, the kid had been banging indentations onto the bottom of an empty fifty-five-gallon fuel drum. Now he had stopped in mid-swing. MacCready was puzzled, but as he passed, they exchanged nods.
“What’s that all about, Corporal?” he asked Juliano.
“Right up your alley, Captain MacCready. Guy’s name is Sparrow.”
“Yeah?”
“That’s a bird, sir.”
“Thanks, Corporal. I’ve seen them. But why’s he banging on that can?”
“Sir, Sparrow’s a kind of musician—calls himself a calypso man.”
MacCready had a flash of recognition.
“’Bout a year ago, some of these local guys started scroungin’ oil drums. Only when they got done with ’em, they weren’t oil drums no more.”
“Pan drums, right?”
“You got it, sir. Pan drums. Steel drums.”
As they moved off, there was one more sharp bang—followed by a beautiful, repeated tone. MacCready stopped and turned. Juliano continued walking. The pan tuner was striking the heat-tempered steel with a wooden mallet and the ringing, clanging rhythm was like nothing he’d ever heard before.
Without looking up, the kid seemed to sense the presence of an audience and began to sing.
This war with England and Germany
Going to mean more starvation and misery
But I going plant provision and fix me affairs
And the white people could fight for a thousand years
As he finished, Sparrow turned toward MacCready and smiled broadly. MacCready nodded and gave the teen the “A-okay” signal. He was about to stop and exchange pleasantries but before he could the corporal began gesturing frantically toward the supply shack.
“We got to get you going, sir.”
MacCready gave Sparrow a last wave before catching up with Juliano. “Nice job if you can get it, Corporal.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Turning the Army’s junk into music.”
“It ain’t bad, sir,” Juliano replied as they entered the shack. “It ain’t bad.”
Twenty minutes later, the zoologist had finished drawing his field equipment. As he pulled hard on the canvas straps of his jump pack, he thought about a line in Sparrow’s song.
“Fighting for a thousand years. Let’s hope not,” he said, turning as Juliano entered from a back room. The corporal was carrying something and his smile was as broad as the musician’s had been.
As MacCready watched, Juliano unwrapped a leather pouch that smelled of gun oil, from which he withdrew a strange-looking weapon.
“Sir, you are gonna love this. It’s a PPSh-41,” he explained. “Two pounds lighter than a Thompson.”
“A Russian grease gun. Now Corporal, why would I want—”
“It’s got a drum mag that holds seventy-three rounds,” Juliano continued, ignoring the interruption. “Accurate to about a hundred yards. And here’s the kicker, sir. She’ll give you nine hundred rounds a minute with almost no recoil.” He scanned the room, then lowered his voice. “It fell off a tanker, if you know what I mean?”
“Tanker must have been headed north,” MacCready said, noting the incongruent white and black markings on the sling—obviously meant for snow-country camouflage.
“Just rub some mud on that sling, sir,” Juliano replied. “You’ll find plenty of it where you’re going.”
MacCready, who would rather have been picking out a pan drum, was suddenly interested. He flashed back to a Ford assembly line he’d seen near Detroit and remembered reading somewhere that the PPSh was one of the first examples of mass-production techniques applied to automatic weapons.
MacCready pointed to a small switch in front of the trigger. “What’s with the lever?”
“Push it forward, it’ll fire a burst; pull it back, single rounds.”
Unexpectedly, the corporal flipped the gun around and gripped the muzzle. He took an imaginary cut with the weapon, then another, as if he were swinging a baseball bat. “Sir, you run out of ammo—you can always use this thing as a club. It’s solid.”